Industrial clusters and innovation performance of SMEs: The mediating effect of inter-organizational cooperation

The current trend towards economies that focus much more on knowledge and innovation, call on organizational models that best fit the competition and allow optimal interconnection of strategic assets. SMEs are pointedly concerned with this critical issue. Since 2011, Morocco has implemented a policy of promoting innovation-oriented industrial clusters. However, the empirical results of studies that dealt with industrial clusters’ effect on the innovation performance of involved companies were mixed and controversial. We adopt an approach through applied inter-organizational cooperation to Moroccan industrial clusters for a better understanding of this presumed relationship. We used partial least squares regression (PLS) to conduct a test of hypothesis with a multisectoral sample of 73 SMEs. The findings of this study confirm the mediating effect of inter-company and industry-science cooperation that turns out to be catalysts to efficiently exploit the resources of clusters and to supply the innovation processes. JEL Codes: O25 O31 L25